Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra and Vancouver Bach Choir join forces to journey a World of Music
Together, groups perform Niel Golden’s Hindustani-driven premiere, as well as Moshe Denburg’s Ani Ma-amin and Farshid Samandari’s Asheghaneh
Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra (left); Vancouver Bach Choir maestro Leslie Dala.
The Vancouver Bach Choir and the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra present World of Music at the Vancouver Playhouse on May 18 at 7:30 pm
FOR VANCOUVER AUDIENCES, the benefits are obvious: a lineup of stellar singers and instrumentalists rendering new, yet approachable, music from three esteemed local composers.
For the members of the Vancouver Inter-Cultural Orchestra, a Silk Road caravanserai of performers who nicely reflect our city’s increasingly multicultural makeup, it’s a chance to break from their usual chamber-orchestra format to explore a larger palette.
But what does this weekend’s World of Music concert hold for the Vancouver Bach Choir, which has built on the western European legacy of its namesake for the bulk of its 93-year existence?
Leslie Dala doesn’t hesitate when asked just that.
“A deeper appreciation of just actually how much music there is in the world!” the Bach Choir’s music director and conductor enthuses. “I mean, we obviously concentrate on the western canon, and particularly the classical canon, but there is just so much great writing out there.”
Dala adds that the collaboration with VICO is not entirely unprecedented: the choir joined forces with the Orchid Ensemble in 2018, and, along with the Vancouver Opera Orchestra, backed Persian singer Alireza Ghorbani a year later.
“I love being able to present it [intercultural music] beside something like, say, the Bach St John Passion that we just did,” he notes. “It’s refreshing and edifying and inspiring to work with people who are completely outside of that tradition, and it just keeps all of us just really learning.”
The learning curve might not be quite as steep as it would first appear, however. World of Music marks the premiere of Niel Golden’s Tabla Concerto, with the composer as soloist, but Dala points out that he’s not going to have to negotiate any of Hindustani music’s more daunting time signatures. Golden, a sublimely accomplished percussionist, will handle all of the rhythmic sorcery, while the VICO players will provide him with a sympathetic backdrop in more-or-less standard time. The view from the podium, Dala says, is comparable to what he’s already experienced conducting the minimalist and post-minimalist compositions of Steve Reich and John Adams.
Vancouver Bach Choir. Photo by Diamond’s Edge Photography
The other two works on the program, Moshe Denburg’s Ani Ma-amin and Farshid Samandari’s Asheghaneh, add words in rather complementary ways.
Persian tenor Jamal Kurdistani
“Moshe’s piece has text taken from a 12th-century religious chant, and it’s all about ‘I believe in God.’ That line is repeated as as a kind of mantra,” Dala explains. “And on the other hand, Farshid’s piece is very secular: he described its source as, like, a Sufi troubadour. It’s based on four quatrains; each one depicts an inner state. And what he’s done is that he’s taken different times of day when a lover is thinking about the beloved one while they’re separated, whether it’s the morning, the afternoon, or the evening. The morning is about the nightingale singing while the memory of the lovers’ encounter is fresh. In the afternoon, this memory turns into great pain and agony; in the evening there’s a little bit of consolation; and by night the poet is able to recall the scent of her in their bed.”
There’s a lovely play between the sacred and the sensual in this pairing of works, accentuated by the presence of the Persian tenor Jamal Kurdistani as soloist in Asheghaneh. But there’s another subtext that is important in light of world affairs: one of these works derives from the great tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah, and the other from the equally enduring and influential world of Islamic poetry. (Some scholars will even argue that the western art-song tradition ultimately derives from the Moorish and Arabic music that filtered into Europe during the nearly 800 years that much of Spain was ruled by a succession of Muslim dynasties.)
“We’re all connected,” Dala stresses. “Our musical traditions were all connected by the wandering musicians that learned such and such in one place and then took it back home with them.
“And this something that I said to the choir the other night,” he continues. “‘Look, this is why music is so important. Music offers a bridge, in a way.’”
World of Music likely couldn’t happen in the Middle East right now, the conductor admits, but that it can happen here offers at least some hope, along with considerable pleasure. “Because it’s music, musicians from all cultures will be working together to create something truly beautiful,” Dala points out. “We’re working in harmony, working in peace, and working to create something beautiful and joyful. If only we could replace all of the weapons with musical instruments, we’d never have conflict again.”
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